Betty Spates’s sister Bobbi could substantiate elements of her story, and she’d also be able to testify that the manager of Jim’s Grill had put the second floor of the rooming house off-limits on that day, preventing the delivery of food to a recuperating tenant—Grace Walden. But Bobbi, too, was afraid.
Evidence of the involvement of organized crime figures would be introduced through the testimony of John McFerren if we could get him to testify about what he heard and saw late on the afternoon of April 4 at the LL&L Produce Company in Memphis.
The role of the local police in the assassination would be raised by evidence about the unexplained transfer on April 4 of two black firemen from their usual duty assignment at fire station 2 and the forced removal of black detective Ed Redditt from his surveillance post in the fire station two hours before the shooting. In addition, there was the pull back of the TACT units from around the Lorraine, the absence of the usual security unit of black homicide detectives, and the disappearance of all police from the motel within an hour of the shooting.
Contrasted with the removal of the local police and their security personnel was the presence on April 4 of FBI or other federal agents in unmarked cars on Huling and Butler streets, with the Lorraine situated in between. We referred to this impinging presence as a “surveillance sandwich.”
The Invaders abruptly left the hotel only to return to the area shortly after the shooting and be stopped by barricades that appeared within ten minutes. We learned that it ordinarily took about thirty minutes for them to be brought from their storage depot and put in place.
The defense would present evidence of the predisposition of the federal government to harm and discredit Dr. King. The use of electronic surveillance, wiretapping, and diversified harassment activities against Dr. King for a number of years before 1968 would be documented. (Former FBI special agents Arthur Murtagh and Bill Turner would substantiate these assertions.)
We would also call as a witness Jim Smith, the local MPD special services intelligence bureau officer, who along with federal agents participated in the electronic surveillance of Dr. King in Memphis. The FBI had always vehemently denied that King was ever electronically surveilled in Memphis. Our surprise evidence would establish this as yet other long-standing lie and establish the interest the FBI or other collaborating federal agency took in Dr. King while he was in Memphis.
The plethora of strange events involving government officials, at one level or another, would be capped by the bizarre disclosure of Ed Redditt concerning a photograph of MPD officer Louis MacKay standing guard over the well-known bundle of evidence lying not in front of Canipe’s but on the corner of Huling and Mulberry streets.
The existence of a previous assassination effort against Dr. King would be put into evidence through the affidavit of Myron Billet.
We would also seek to introduce the affidavit of Jules “Ricco” Kimbel who claimed to have piloted the plane, owned by a company of New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello, that flew two shooters to Memphis from Canada. Kimbel’s statement conflicted in part with our developing understanding of the events, but he was adamant about the involvement of government assets in coordinating and executing the assassination.
Finally, the defense would provide a range of evidence about the cover-up, official dirty tricks, and the suppression of the truth about what took place on that afternoon, starting with the hoax broadcast that diverted police attention to the northern part of the city away from the crime scene and the logical escape route to the south. This would be presented in conjunction with the failure of the MPD to follow some of its standard emergency procedures designed to facilitate the apprehension of a fleeing suspect. We would give evidence establishing the cutting down of the brush the morning after the shooting, and we would show that it was at the request of the police.
Then there were the efforts to kill James or to buy him off with an offer of money, a pardon, and a new identity for a detailed confession. Testimony from James’s previous attorney Jack Kershaw about William Bradford Huie’s offer of money was planned. Evidence about the contract offer on James’s life that was offered to inmate Tim Kirk, and the events surrounding James’s escape from Brushy Mountain Penitentiary at a time when the HSCA was being founded, was to be introduced.
James’s lawyers and his brother weren’t immune from dirty tricks. St. Louis television reporter John Auble was scheduled to testify about specific instances of HSCA dirty tricks set up against Mark Lane in 1978 and also against James’s brother Jerry, through the use of an informant, Oliver Patterson, who admitted his role. Former Alton, Illinois, police officer John Light was scheduled to testify about the HSCA, FBI, and New York Times collaborating to falsely lay the blame for the Alton bank robbery on James and Jerry Ray. We believed that all this evidence was relevant because it showed external, even official, interest in establishing James Earl Ray as the lone assassin or in getting him out of the way.
The bureau’s manipulation of the media’s coverage of Dr. King and James was to be the subject of testimony researched and prepared by Bill Schaap of the Institute of Media Analysis in New York. Schaap’s research had documented a campaign of hate and distortion against King and a gradual reconstruction of James’s image from that of a petty criminal to a lone, racist assassin.
Our concluding evidence was to be provided by Walter Fauntroy himself, who said that he and the other HSCA members were misled by the staff and their own counsel. Fauntroy would say that his review of the evidence now indicated to him that James was not guilty.
PRINCIPAL PARTICIPANTS ON both sides of the case held one final pretrial meeting on Sunday morning, January 24.
Hickman Ewing had been provided in discovery with our documentation that dealt with the bureau’s COINTELPRO activities against Dr. King, as well as Bill Schaap’s research on the manipulation of the media and the Jerry Ray/William Bradford Huie telephone conversation transcripts. As a result, I believe he thought we were going to defend James by putting the government on trial; to a certain extent, of course, this was true.
Ewing told the judge he believed that much of our evidence wasn’t relevant to any trial of James Earl Ray for murder. He admitted, for example, that FBI harassment of Dr. King was well known but maintained that it was irrelevant and that there was no evidence of any such activity against Dr. King in Memphis. I replied that there was indeed. The prosecutor looked skeptical.
I told the judge that I did intend to introduce such evidence, that I believed to be relevant since a significant aspect of the defense case pointed to the involvement of the bureau and perhaps other intelligence agencies in the murder of Dr. King and its cover-up. The judge proposed a private meeting with the defense after this session in order to ascertain specifically what evidence we were seeking to introduce.
The two sides had basically agreed on the trial procedures to be followed, but a few areas had not been clearly defined. Perhaps the main concern was the introduction of statements from witnesses who for one reason or another couldn’t attend and therefore couldn’t be cross-examined. We formally requested that FBI 302 interview reports be excluded because our investigation had located witnesses who repudiated 302 statements attributed to them that they had never seen.
It wasn’t as though exclusion of 302 reports wouldn’t have hurt our case. Our team had tried feverishly, without success, to locate alibi witnesses William Reed and Ray Hendrix. If the 302s were inadmissible, we knew we’d have lost their alibi statements, but we’d come to believe that some of the 302s were so unreliable that they might cast doubt on the trial itself. The judge ruled that such reports of interviews, since they were taken by law enforcement officers, had a basic presumption of credibility and should be admissable.
Throughout the meeting I waited for producer Jack Saltman to bring up the fact that the FBI had made reservations in the same hotel and on the same floor as the jury and had a technical surveillance team go through each of the rooms reserved for the jurors. It be
gan to appear that he wasn’t going to raise the issue at all. It may have been that he was afraid of the impact on the judge or even on Ewing. Ultimately, I forced the issue and he finally reluctantly mentioned it. The revelation was greeted with blank stares and no comment at all by the judge or the prosecutor.
IN OUR PRIVATE CONFERENCE with the judge, I outlined the conspiracy-related elements of the case, and in so doing summarized evidence on the following issues we intended to introduce:
Government intelligence agency operations directed against Dr. King, as well as the FBI’s specific COINTELPRO, COMINFIL, and other programs of harassment and electronic surveillance, including activities carried out in Memphis.
Previous FBI and other governmental intelligence agency efforts to facilitate or arrange the murder of Dr. King.
The changing of Dr. King’s hotel as well as his room.
The manipulation and use of the print and visual media by the FBI and intelligence agencies.
Specific attempts to either buy off or kill the defendant.
The expert opinion of the chairman of the subcommittee of the HSCA, Walter Fauntroy, that the committee was misled by its staff.
The judge was negative about allowing in any of this evidence, questioning its relevance to the specific charge of murder. The more he heard, the more rigid he seemed to become. He asked if we had evidence of any COINTELPRO activities against Dr. King in Memphis. I said we did. He asked what form it took. I said the evidence came from a participant in the activity. Reluctantly, he admitted that he might let such evidence in if we could concretely show it was done in Memphis.
It was difficult to remain restrained, particularly in light of the disclosures of FBI activity regarding the trial jury’s security. If anything, I expected that this revelation would enhance the relevance and credibility of the point we sought to make. In retrospect, the incident might have made the judge even more cautious. He promised a ruling by 6:00 p.m.
I left the conference more depressed than at any time since we had begun to work on the trial. If the judge ruled against us, our case would be severely crippled; the entire trial could have become a farce. I believed that my obligations as a lawyer would require me to go immediately to the prison and confer with James. I’d have to put everything on the table and let him decide whether he wished to go ahead. Since the idea of the trial itself had originated with me, I certainly was not going to collaborate in its subversion.
At about 2:45 that afternoon, as we waited in the corridor for a pretrial press conference to begin, my frustration must have been obvious. There was no telling what I would do, or what I would say to the media.
Just before the press conference began, the judge called Ewing and me aside. He was going to let the defense put on its case, but he was ordering us to reveal the names of all of our witnesses, except the “security” witnesses, to the prosecution by the next morning.
The press conference went ahead in a spirited, upbeat manner, and when we left the courthouse late that afternoon I believed we had the court’s approval for putting forward a wide-ranging defense.
24
The Trial: January 25–February 5, 1993
JUDGE MARVIN FRANKEL CALLED THE COURT TO ORDER at 9:30 a.m., Monday, January 25, 1993.
In his opening remarks the prosecutor forcefully contended that James was guilty. He said the defense would be “Anybody but me”; James would have them believe that the responsibility for Dr. King’s murder was with the FBI, the CIA, or some guy named Raul.
I asked the jury to keep open minds and promised to take them on a journey that would boggle the imagination. I told them Dr. King had been a lamb led to slaughter by forces he knew only too well but that the defendant was also manipulated and controlled by forces that to this very day he didn’t understand and couldn’t identify.
The prosecution’s first witness was Rev. Samuel “Billy” Kyles. Ewing led him through the sanitation workers’ strike and Dr. King’s agreement to come to Memphis. Kyles outlined the idea behind the Poor People’s Campaign and said that, in his view, it was “… too much for the powers that be, to bring these poor people to Washington, to embarrass this nation by camping out on the mall in Washington.” Ewing then moved on to the details of the march.
To our astonishment, Kyles blurted out that he had learned later that the FBI had hired provocateurs to disrupt the march. We’d fought to have such evidence admitted on behalf of the defense, and here it was being volunteered by the prosecution’s very first witness. Judge Frankel seemed uncomfortable. Ewing, obviously unwilling to challenge his first witness, tried to ignore the statement.
In discussing events close to April 4, Kyles volunteered that they had boycotted one of the local newspapers, the Commercial Appeal, because it had engaged in character assassination of Dr. King. This was an example of just the sort of media manipulation we were planning to introduce.
The questioning quickly moved Kyles to April 4. The preacher described his supposed conversation in room 306 with King and Abernathy, and his position on the balcony some feet away from where King was shot just after 6:00 p.m. I began cross-examination by asking Kyles if he was familiar with Dr. King’s speech at the Riverside Church on April 4, 1967. He said it was King’s first major speech against the war and admitted that it had engendered a great deal of hostility. Kyles then volunteered that Hoover had made no secret of his dislike for King, whom he had called the most notorious liar in the country.
Kyles confirmed the fact that there was usually a black security squad formed to protect Dr. King in Memphis. He testified that he didn’t remember there being any security on April 4 and that he was aware that the TACT units had been pulled back.
I countered Kyles’s assertion that Dr. King had always stayed at the Lorraine, and he had to admit that in fact, at least on the two occasions before his final visit, he had stayed at the Rivermont.
I asked Kyles why, when he lived in Memphis, he had registered in room 312 at the Lorraine. He answered that he took a room in the event that someone else coming in without a reservation might need it. But in the next breath he went on to say, “As it turned out, A. D. King did come in, his brother came in,” implying that A. D. was going to take the room. He further stated that he ended up taking A. D. to his home. In fact A. D. had registered in room 201.
Finally, I challenged his description of his activities on the fateful afternoon. I raised the MPD surveillance reports, which recorded him not as being in the room with Martin, but rather knocking on his door at 5:50 and calling him outside.
The dilemma for the defense, of course, was that by undermining Kyles’s credibility, we could erode one of our basic themes of the FBI’s anti-King activity. Kyles stuck to his story.
My exchange with the first witness would be one of the most heated of the trial. It was a dramatic start.
The court recessed after Kyles’s testimony. On the steps of the courthouse Kyles said it was a real trial in every way, that the defense didn’t pull any punches, and that his cross-examination was rigorous.
After the recess Ewing read into the record the statements of Ralph Abernathy and MPD intelligence officer Willie B. Richmond, which contained his surveillance report. Richmond’s statement revealed that Billy Kyles had not been inside Dr. King’s room at any time but that he had knocked on Dr. King’s door around 5:50—about eleven minutes before the shooting. Dr. King answered the door, peered out, closed the door and emerged a few minutes later, shortly before 6:00, ready to leave for a soul food dinner at Kyles’s home.
Abernathy’s statement confirmed that he and King hurriedly prepared to go after the SCLC staff meeting broke up. He remembered Dr. King going outside and waiting for him on the balcony.
Lt. George Loenneke was brought on to describe his observations of Dr. King when he was struck. Loenneke stated that he had been watching Dr. King’s party and the Lorraine from a peephole at fire station 2 when he saw King shot. As we have seen, two other firemen (Charles S
tone and William King) said that the lieutenant was fiddling with his locker at the moment Dr. King was hit.
It wasn’t significant, but something else that the lieutenant knew was important. He had told me about the Seabrook salesgirl who volunteered that she saw a man park a white Mustang in front of Canipe’s amusement company and go upstairs in the rooming house. She was certain that the man was not James Earl Ray.
I wanted this story on the record. The problem was that it was hearsay. Ewing clearly knew about it because before the lieutenant could answer my eliciting question he was on his feet objecting to “anything that someone at Seabrook supposedly told him.” The judge promptly sustained.
The prosecution established the presence of the bundle in front of Canipe’s and introduced testimony relating to how soon after the shot was heard that it was found. Through the testimony of Deputy Sheriff Vernon Dollahite, Ewing did indeed introduce a photograph—for illustrative purposes—of the general area around the time, showing a police car parked up on the sidewalk of the fire station parking lot. This was the photograph he had shown us in discovery and I thought it was misleading because he appeared to be using it to imply that the police car was in that spot at the time that James was allegedly fleeing. In fact, the photograph was taken at an entirely different time because the car in the picture was not that driven by Lt. Emmett Douglass, which at the time was parked much farther back and adjacent to the northwest door on the side of the fire station.
Former MPD lieutenant and FBI Academy graduate James Papia took the stand. He was one of the first officers on the scene and in the rooming house, and he testified that there was discoloration in the bathtub; he said it appeared someone had stood in it with shoes on.
Orders to Kill Page 29